The stories about him at Canadian Press are truly the stuff of legends, even 60 years after the fact." Multilingual, musical "Boss built his own legend in Korea, where he was seen as the senior Canadian correspondent during the entire conflict.
"Bill Boss is the last of the generation of Canadian Press correspondents from the Second World War who did a remarkable job of reporting from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific," said Scott White, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Press in Toronto. He was among the elite of Second World War reporters, ranking alongside the likes of Ross Munro and Bill Stewart of the Canadian Press, Matthew Halton and Peter Stursberg of CBC, and Charles Lynch of Reuters.
His career with the national news service was a relatively brief 14 years, but the legacy he left behind as one of the wire service's legendary war correspondents endured until he died. He wasn't only tough physically, he was tough in other ways. "I got to know him in Korea, and he was the toughest reporter I encountered there.
"The Bill Boss byline has always been a trusted and familiar one to Canadian newspaper readers," noted author Berton, who died three years ago, wrote in the Toronto Star in 1958. He was 90.īorn May 3, 1917, in Kingston, Ont., Boss was the epitome of foreign correspondents, "a man with a mission," one of many articles about him said, who roved the world's hotspots in goatee, khakis, silk scarf and black beret. Gerard William Ramaut (Bill) Boss, known affectionately by his wire initials "bb" to generations of Canadian Press reporters and editors, died of pneumonia early Wednesday in an Ottawa hospital. Pierre Berton called him one of the toughest war correspondents he ever knew, a trusted and familiar newsman who "ate censors for breakfast."
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